Nw Is Growing At Fastest Rate Ever Book Says Births By Poor, Young Moms, Immigration Causing Population Boom
The greater Pacific Northwest region is in a growth spurt.
The area is growing faster now than during any previous decade, with 2.8 million more people than there were 10 years ago - roughly the population of greater Seattle.
That’s faster than anywhere else in the country, but don’t blame Californians.
When two Seattle authors set out to tackle population growth in the Pacific Northwest, Alan Thein Durning guessed the solution might call for Californians to stay home and everyone to have fewer children.
Instead, Durning found that from Alaska to northern California, from Tacoma to Butte, the root causes of population growth are as hidden as child sexual abuse and as difficult as poverty.
In their new book, “Misplaced Blame,” Durning, 32, founder of Northwest Environment Watch, and researcher Christopher Crowther, 29, connect population growth to poverty, sexual abuse, underfunded family planning services, subsidies to mobile Americans and current immigration policies.
“Growth seems to be a symptom of neglect of our children and our communities,” Durning said last week.
In an analysis that included British Columbia, Washington, Oregon, Idaho and parts of California, western Montana and southern Alaska, they found the population growth is a big reason for the traffic and suburban sprawl Northwesterners feel, and it’s affecting drinking water, air quality, roads, beaches and parks and rivers.
Most people assume there’s nothing they can do about it.
“There is something, but the truth is more complicated and in some ways more difficult,” Durning said. “In some ways, it’s also more hopeful.”
About 42 percent of the newcomers to the Northwest are born here, while nearly 58 percent migrated from somewhere else. Among the authors’ conclusions:
Nearly one-third of births in the Pacific Northwest would not occur if the region eliminated poverty. Women who live in poverty have about twice as many children on average as more affluent women.
“They do not actively seek pregnancy but they are less aggressive than women who are not poor in attempting to prevent it. They are less careful with contraception and they accept pregnancy when it happens. At least, they reason, they can be good mothers, raise good children and fill their lives with the challenges and rewards of having a family.”
Nowhere is the impact of poverty clearer than among teens. The authors point to Yakima, the poorest county in the region where 113 of every 1,000 girls aged 15 to 19 give birth each year. In Clackamas County, Oregon, part of middle-class suburban Portland, the rate is less than one-third that of Yakima’s, and in the North Shore area of Vancouver, British Columbia, with the area’s lowest poverty rate, only five in 1,000 teems get pregnant each year.
Outside of its poorest groups, the Northwest does not have a high birth rate. The two-child family has been the regional norm for a quarter of a century, the authors say.
They call for states to use public and private dollars to lift children out of poverty, including spending as much on the region’s children as it does on its senior citizens. They also support holding fathers accountable for half the cost of raising children both to fight poverty and discourage adult men from having sex with teens.
Sexual abuse puts girls at greater risk of early and repeated childbearing. Sixty-two percent of school-age mothers were victims of sexual abuse before becoming pregnant and are at very high risk for having more children. The authors call for better funding of Child Protective Services and community education.
More than a third of all Northwest pregnancies are accidental, yet states have cut family planning services dramatically. Washington spends $2.73 a person and Idaho, with the region’s highest birthrate, spends nothing. The authors conclude if all pregnancies were intentional, the long-term rate of population growth would decline by about 12 percent.
Subsidies to Americans’ “raging mobility” costs communities both stability and tax dollars. Every year one American in six moves to a new county or state. Domestic migration accounted for 46 percent of regional growth since 1980, bringing 1.5 million people.
This rootlessness is the largest reason that North American places lack the sense of community taken for granted in settlements on other continents, Durning and Crowther conclude.
Accommodating the newcomers is also expensive. The authors point out that when a new house goes up in the suburbs, that house requires schools, roads sewers, water pipes, fire and police protection, but home buyers cover only a fraction of the $20,000 needed to provide that. In addition, communities often foot the bill for government subsidies to large specialized businesses that may migrate to the Northwest, then bring in workers from other places.
International immigration boosts the Northwest’s population substantially. The immigration can hurt immigrants’ country of origin by drawing off its most productive members, while at the same time depressing wages for the poorest Americans. The authors call for immigration reform to close the door somewhat, which they say would benefit the poor globally.
Durning said in his research he found an almost universal sense of loss in the face of growth, from old-timers saddened by crowding to poorer air quality and more traffic.
Projections are that by the year 2020 the region will add as many people as now live in the state of Washington. The problems the Northwest faces then will not be unique.
“What may be more unique is we may still have a chance to do something about it because development started later and because of the environmental awareness here,” Durning said. “We see the Northwest as a place of possibilities.”
, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Graphic: Population trend
MEMO: This sidebar appeared with the story: Reading Alan Durning will sign copies of “Misplaced Blame, The Real Roots of Population Growth” on Thursday, Aug. 21 at Aunties Bookstore from 12:30 to 1:30 p.m.